Legends of Opera

Pilar Lorengar

She was known for having a full register with a youthful timbre to her voice as well as a distinctive vibrato.

She studied in Barcelona and worked in various halls to pay for voice lessons.

For a time she studied in Madrid and in West Berlin she studied with Carl Ebert and mezzo-soprano Hertha Klust, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's teacher.

Pilar Lorengar started singing leading roles in Spanish Zarzuela before moving onto opera in 1995 where she played Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro.

Her Salzburg Festival debut happened in 1961 when she sang Ilia in Idomeneo.
At the San Francisco Opera she sang Desdemona in Otello and she played Violetta in La Traviata at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin.

She made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni. Over subsequent years she performed in Madrid, Brussels, La Scala at Milan, Liceu at Barcelona and frequently she sang with the Vienna State Opera, L'Opera de Paris and even as far away as Tokyo.

She had a contract with the Deutsche Oper Berlin and she enjoyed a relationship with that company for thirty years. Her final triumph with them was when she played Valentine in Les Huguenots.

She was honoured in 1963 given the title of Kammersänger by the Senate of Berlin.